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Phishing Awareness

How to spot a phishing e-mail

What is phishing?

Phishing generally involves a fraudulent e-mail you may receive appearing to come
from a legitimate sender (e.g. the university, your bank, Apple, etc.). These messages
direct you to click on a link that is usually embedded in the e-mail, and when clicking
the link, you are directed to a web page that is prompting you to logon using your
credentials. These e-mails are a form of social engineering that are designed to trick
you into handing over your credentials so that the attacker can gain access to your
bank account, sensitive emails, etc.

What is spear-phishing?

Spear phishing is a specific type of phishing e-mail targeted at specific individuals
or organizations. Attackers go to great lengths to to make the e-mail appear legitimate.
To make the e-mails as believable as possible, the attacker may address you by your
first name, and may use screen scrapes of actual web sites so that you believe you
are actually logging on to your account.